Clients who stay for years, won at exactly the right moment

Why does advertising for accounting firms work differently than for other businesses?

Because you’re not selling an engagement but a relationship that lasts years, and that calculation decides what you can afford to pay per enquiry. Most advertising campaigns are built for products bought once. An accounting firm sells the opposite: a client who invoices every year and grows with you. It explains why so many firms either don’t advertise (“too expensive per click”) or advertise without results (“plenty of enquiries, nothing to show for it”).

Both problems stem from the same mistake: calculating with the first engagement instead of the client value. If you value a new SME client at a single set of annual accounts, you can indeed afford to bid very little. If you work out what that client is worth over the whole relationship, you’ll find there’s plenty of room — and that the competitor who does run those numbers is currently winning every auction.

Does Google Ads work for an accounting firm?

Yes, provided you bid on client value rather than on the price of the first engagement. People search actively for an accountant or bookkeeper, so the demand already exists — the only question is who captures it.

The trap is the click price. On “accountant” and “bookkeeper” it runs high enough to scare you off if you measure the return against a single set of annual accounts. Once you calculate what an SME client is worth over three to five years, the picture changes: an enquiry at € 150 to € 300 is often still a good buy, and you can afford to bid on the searches that actually matter.

Why don’t freelancers and SMEs belong in the same campaign?

Because the algorithm then optimises towards the cheapest enquiry, and that is almost always the smallest client.

The word “bookkeeper” is searched far more often than “accountant”, and the bulk of those searchers are freelancers with modest budgets. Nothing wrong with that — unless your firm targets SMEs and both groups sit in one campaign.

The setup that works is the same as your time registration: separated by what it earns. A freelancer campaign (or a deliberate exclusion of that segment), an SME campaign with its own copy and a higher allowed cost per enquiry, and separate lines for specialisations you want to grow into — an industry focus, audit, or advisory.

When do business owners switch accounting firms?

Around the turn of the year, with their orientation starting in autumn — not during tax season, when search volume peaks.

Search volume peaks during tax season, but that is mostly one-off work: private individuals and freelancers with a deadline. The clients a firm grows on — business owners switching firms for good — decide around the turn of the year, and their orientation already begins in autumn. The trigger is rarely price alone: a missed deadline, too little proactive advice, the feeling of having become just a number.

A good campaign follows that rhythm. At its sharpest from September through January, when the switches happen; deliberately selective during tax season, because click prices then peak on the least valuable traffic. That is exactly the opposite of how most firm campaigns are set up — to the extent they have any seasonal setup at all.

How do you measure a decision cycle that runs for months?

By measuring the whole funnel: the enquiry as the first conversion and the won client as the second, fed back manually from your CRM once a month if need be.

Between the first search and the signature, a firm switch easily takes several months. A measurement that only looks at the last thirty days then draws the structurally wrong conclusion: the campaign that delivered the later January client back in October looks too expensive, and the budget shifts to campaigns that score quick but small enquiries.

Only with that second conversion do you see which campaign delivers clients rather than just conversations, and only then do you dare to bid what a client is really worth. Practice software or CRM makes no difference — a monthly export is enough to flip the picture.

Should you advertise locally or nationally?

Either, and the answer depends on whether clients walk into your office or not.

If you mostly work with business owners from your own city or region, a radius around the office with town names in the ad copy and on the landing page is almost always the cheapest traffic available: less competition on “accountant ” than on “accountant”, and a warmer reception. If you work fully remotely, that constraint disappears and specialisation becomes the place name — “accountant for e-commerce”, “accountant for healthcare freelancers” — with the same effect: narrower audience, lower click price, higher relevance.

What doesn’t work is the halfway house: advertising nationally with a generic message. Then you compete with everyone on the most expensive terms without giving a reason why you.

What you can expect from me

I work a fixed number of days per week, fully dedicated to your accounts. You won’t get a junior handling it alongside ten other clients. Everything runs in your own Google and Meta accounts, so you keep the campaigns, the history and the data — even if we ever part ways.